Tribute to age. Observational film about four elderly people, four private trips, little odysseys from home to the marketplace and back. How people that have time deal with it: are we all rushing towards slow motion shopping trips?

When speed gets old.....

{instead of director’s statement}

    Watching elderly men and women calms me down. Time drew the lines of their expression firmly into the faces, so you can often tell what is this person like. Does he smile a lot, laughs, worries or frowns? Is she easily irritated, calm or serious. How do they do it, that in every moment the hope is stronger than the fear of unknown?

    Near where I live, there is quite a concentration of people of age. They come here from all around the city to shop. Being old is not trendy and while everyone fights age in many possible ways, the elderly peacefully travel to this old shabby marketplace to shop for cheap veggies and to kill some time. Is this the life we will all once live?

    I am tempted to make a film that will try to enhance the strange paradox of old age: the life is getting close to its end, how close is really hard to guess and at the same time the majority of elderly people have so much time on their hands, that it is difficult to keep one occupied with meaningful activities. After long period of life, when we were mostly stressed, tried to manage few things at the same time while saving every minute and we constantly complained about lack of time, here come years when everything changes. All of the sudden we have plenty of time. The life rhythm changes radically. The special time flow of our heroes mirrors in their rituals. Do they try to get as much as possible from the time given? Do they even think about it in these terms?

    I would like to take the closed circle of their shopping trips and take it apart; to stop and portray each minute with the exact moves that are done in the exact same way for many years now;  to show the period of life, when time dissolves, ceases to exist in a way and almost resigns to be important. Their motivation is actually much stronger than just veggies at bargain price. What most people find waste of time, useless or even funny, pensioners do in a positive way and use these trips as social events, sort of. For some of my heroes, this is what life consists of now!

    I would like the viewer to experience the total lack of acceleration, the repetitiveness and the slowness of these lives. They are not worse or better than speedy life of other generations, but different. And it could be enriching to experience this difference.

Subject matter

{about what and why}

    I would like to turn this subject into a visually narrated ode to age and to tell through pictures about moments in life of people, who got close to its end. How they cope with frustration, resignation, passivity, hope, sicknesses, helplessness,    dependence on others and being closer and closer to death without going crazy, or how they fight it by concentrating on practical things, or maybe even the positive things. I want to reprint the strength and will it cost each of them to travel in the public transportation and fight the little fights and battles on the way and also once there. How they gather here and conquer the loneliness by talking above the shelves of yoghurts or how they stand side by side in the line and the simple presence of others constitutes part of their social life. How they drag the caddies, even with crouches and walking sticks, how they search thru the sale flyers, push the cart, carefully put the goods into it, wait patiently in the line. Oh, this patience! It drives others insane. The slow motion style. Almost as if they believed the world has as much time as them. Or if they thought there is nowhere to rush to. Maybe there is not.

     I want to try to show all this by images. The way our heroes will walk, stop, stare or look, stand or behave in general will tell much more than any commentaries. To film a scene in the tram itself, how they sometimes very boldly fight for their seat or on the contrary stand modestly and are very grateful when someone lets them sit, this will be more valuable than any comments.

    Nowadays it can be tough to find something positive and purposeful. In my opinion, the strength of elderly people and how they deal with their often uneasy life could be a great source of optimism.

Structure

     The four odysseys will take place within one day of film time. Our heroes, one of them might be a couple, will all travel from different parts of the city. Each one of them will have different background.

    The film will start at our heroes’ homes. One will be writing down a shopping list, this is the first time we will use the motive of hands, it will come back few times in the film. We will see the often remarkable handwriting of old people. The couple will be dressing up almost as to church or some event. All of them will be preparing to leave the house, only we will not know yet where to. At the end of the film we will come back here, with the shopping, the prey.

    The film will try to answer to the questions what do retired people do all day. The way they stop to talk to others near the vegetable stands, how they wait for the tram, how they stop to rest and look around, all the little things that prolong the time, or how we like to say, kill time. This might sound too violent to the elderly people.

    In this film I would like to use different means to extend the time as much as possible. As I said, to make possible to feel almost physically the length of the days of my heroes. I will use very long static shots and let my heroes walk in and out of the shots. The lack of words will also support the slow rhythm, I might use emphasized sound of their breath.

    The contrasting fact that they might have little time left will be reflected mostly in the thoughts that run through their heads and partly in the things they do. For example how they shop, the quantities they buy, how it is occupying their minds, how they meet people and think about those that died recently or how they carefully handle money and yet splurge sometimes in their own particular way [like the elderly man that bought three fresh daffodils for his wife]. I would also show this in the beginning of the film in the house of the heroes, how it is meticulously clean and organized, as if not to bother anyone...

We can be HEROES..., just for one day

Jarmila

    Jarmila takes her shopping trip as a social event. She dresses up for it, she says she has to make up for the age. She is 94. Her shopping takes place twice a week, because she cannot carry a lot of things, but lives quite close. She loves people and city life, she is very active, still works as seamstress for her old customers. A lot of them died, but few keep her busy. She shops often in second hand shops for clothes and is a persuaded communist.

Karel a Julie

    They are a very cute couple. They always come together and while Julie sits down on the bench, Karel takes care of the shopping. Their trip is very regular, every Friday they take tram number 5 at 10.05 from Flora, get to the marketplace at quarter to 11, take half an hour to shop for veggies for the whole week. You can find them on the same spot every week. Julie has difficulties to walk and tires easily, so they take it slowly, stop a lot, hold their hands. At 11.30 they take the 5 back and they are at home for lunch.

Miluse... a Karel

    For Miluse and Karel the market is a meeting point. They travel here from far, twice a week, on Tuesday and on Friday. They sit on the bench first, drink coffee from the machine and chat. Old friends.. Than they go around, buy some veggies for the soup. Sometimes they even grab a bite to eat in one of the stands or visit the nearby supermarket. Together with watching TV, reading colorful magazines and taking organized telemarketing shopping trips it is the program of their life. They visit each other often, sometimes even cook for each other.

Visual style

    The theme will be made into visual essay, without synchronized sound and any commentary, except the voice over of our 4 heroes. Even that would be used scarcely. It will reflect what goes through the head of each one of them, but only what they think for themselves. These thoughts will give us sufficient information about the personality of our heroes. One question I would be interested in is whether they have done what they always wanted to do in life and why they don't do it now when they have so much time.

     The rhythm will be rather slow, copying the life rhythm of these people. The camera will as precisely as possible act and observe in a way that is similar to the way our heroes live. The camera should actually become old and slow and breathless, very static, with long shots and observations allowing the viewers as well as our heroes to think a lot. Observe, compare, think and judge. The more time elderly people stand, rest and wait in line, the more time they have to get curious and reflect. The passivity of the body, that necessarily comes with age is balanced by greater activity in the brain. They simply notice thing we are to busy to see or we overlook them, or register but give no importance to it. The camera should behave in the same way, the form will adjust to the content. 

     I would like to use plenty of close ups, simply because there is very special beauty in the images of elderly people. I want to film their faces and also hands. There is something very captivating about old hands and how they handle things.  The sense of touch seems to become even more important with age. The touch of these hands is careful and somewhat clumsy, but almost always very loving. I would like to show how they pick up fruits and vegetables at the market to check the quality, how they open bags and wallets and take out banknotes, which are so precious to them. Also I want to capture affectionate grabbing, the elderly couple holding hands or grabbing each other’s arm.

Another type of shots will be wider angle that can show just the figure and point out the rhythm of their walk and shape of their body.

     The colors of the film will be somewhat turned down, with accents on grey. This will support the feeling of tiredness of our heroes, the kind of fatigue age brings on. The eyes are not as  efficient and the vision is not as sharp, clear and bright as it used to be, it is somewhat numb. The focus will be on one subject, the background will be a bit blurred. We will work with smaller depth of field.

     The sound will be exclusively consisting of stream of consciousness of each of our heroes. We will start of with one story, to it belonging one voice with the thoughts. The stories will than mix and interweave into each other. After we establish the voices to the heroes, the voices will start to blend to each other, creating what will seem like commentary of one to another hero. Solely the music that is used in the environment they travel thru will be used in the film. The voice announcing the tram's stops, the annoying sound before closing the doors, sound they hear hundred times before they arrive, will phrase the film. The pop songs used in the huge marketplace will contrast with the slowness of their path.

     The climax of this film will be so silent and discrete, one may not even notice it. Our heroes will meet. Some of them will exchange the shopping carts, some will reach out for the same piece of fruit at the same time, some will just stand together at the line for the cashier. They will smile at each other or exchange few shopping tips or they might ignore the others. It will be a micro interaction, that will mean absolutely nothing and everything. Meeting like many others in the time these people have left. What seemed like a huge waste of time at the beginning suddenly makes sense. As long as they journey, shop and meet others, they live. It becomes clear that this is part of what keeps elderly people alive. Contrary to what young people think about all this, old speed is beneficial.